Yeah, really, what’s the deal? We’re almost ten posts in, and, plllt, nothin’. :^)
Plague gets far too little attention in history.
Academic History generally hates plague. It robs graduate students of PhD dissertation subjects for large swaths of years. Intricate analysis of migration and economics and this and that are rendered absurd when a disease is killing off entire towns.
The quote is glibly 60% of Europe. It was also huge %s of China. In fact, if South America had not been spared, the total % of mankind erased would be up around 70%.
And no one really knows what stopped it. No reason this was not an extinction event.
There was a rush by governments to diminish the realities of plague during Covid in order to keep people happy and voting for the various Deep States. The aftermath of that is to avoid the reality of my previous paragraph.